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Re: Billy Howerdel Talks About His Work On "Chinese Democracy"
A PERFECT CIRCLE Guitarist Talks About His Work On GUNS N' ROSES' 'Chinese Democracy'
- Feb. 4, 2008
The Pulse of Radio reports that ASHES DIVIDE, the new project fronted by A PERFECT CIRCLE guitarist Billy Howerdel, has launched its own YouTube channel at this location. An initial group of interviews between Howerdel and MTV personality Matt Pinfield has been posted at the site. In the exchanges, Howerdel discusses his musical upbringing, recording with A PERFECT CIRCLE, the assembly of the ASHES DIVIDE touring band and the inspiration behind some of the project's songs.
One little-known fact about Howerdel is that before forming A PERFECT CIRCLE with TOOL singer Maynard James Keenan in 2000, he spent several years working on the still-unreleased GUNS N' ROSES album, "Chinese Democracy". Howerdel told The Pulse of Radio what he contributed to the record. "I came in there initially to program some guitar sounds, and then wound up hitting it off with Axl (Rose, GUNS frontman), and then my job kind of migrated into the computer guy. I don't know what you would call me exactly. I kind of was there all night with Axl as he would work. The band came in during the day with a producer and would work most of the day, and then I would come in ten o'clock at night, say goodbye to those guys, Axl would show up later on, and then we'd do our thing all night and then do it the next day."
ASHES DIVIDE's debut album, "Keep Telling Myself It's All Right", is due out on April 8. The first single is called "The Stone". Howerdel sings and plays guitar, bass and keyboard on the album, which also features A PERFECT CIRCLE's Josh Freese on drums and Maynard James Keenan's 11-year-old son Devo on cello.
ASHES DIVIDE has yet to announce tour plans or a live lineup.
Source: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe … emID=89935
Re: Billy Howerdel Talks About His Work On "Chinese Democracy"
Ok, so he was... "the computer guy"... that's not vague at all... it clears a lot up...
Actually, I guess what he just said is more than we've heard from just about everybody else involved with it, so I shouldn't make fun, but all that really did is make me wonder exacty what it was he was doing.
Re: Billy Howerdel Talks About His Work On "Chinese Democracy"
Interesting, although I'm pretty sure the work he did on it has long been scratched. Sounds like it was back when Axl was supposed to be heading in a more NIN/Industrial direction.
yeah it was back in like 1999-2000 before bucket and brain....Freese was still in the band then and they both took off at the same time to do APC
I think i have an article with Howerdel and Maynard from that time frame I should check it out to see if they mention GnR in there
Re: Billy Howerdel Talks About His Work On "Chinese Democracy"
Billy Howerdel on CD (Quick mention in article)
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Do you get tired of people asking you about working with Axl Rose?
Haha, I don't know what to say sometimes, because I was there for a long time. But it's not like you would think, like crazy stuff was going on. It wasn't some crazy situation. I always think people expect a big answer. I had a very strange job which wasn't exactly labeled but I just call it 'pro tools engineer' or 'pro tools editor' or something like that. But it afforded me the learning, I got to learn a lot about making records, and I'd never been in the studio for that long a time. I think I can say that I made a better sounding record than I would've because I worked for Guns N' Roses. I got to be around a lot of people that knew what they were doing and the bar got raised to what I found to be acceptable for music production, form being in there.
http://www.metalsucks.net/?p=4625#more-4625
Close to bottum of the page.
thanks to Disco Volante @ HTGTH
